Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a system and method for detecting and locating human beings in an affected area using a locally generated radio access network.
Description of the Prior Art
In many cases, it is not known when a calamity may hit due to terrorism or a natural catastrophe such as an earthquake, tornado, hurricanes, and so forth. Nonetheless, because such a calamity may collapse buildings, schools, and houses over a vast area, leaving people buried alive under rubble, time is of essence whenever such a calamity hits. Simply put, the faster the first respondents can find the people trapped beneath the multiple masses of debris and wreckage of collapsed buildings, the higher the probability of being rescued.
Still, finding the people that are buried alive under rubble and debris may present a significant challenge, particularly if the destruction from the calamity has rendered all or a significant portion of the existing communication infrastructure in an affected area non-functional.
Attempts have been made to address the issue of locating people in the wake of a calamity. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has proposed a technology called “Finding Individuals for Disaster and Emergency Response” (“FINDER”). FINDER is based on the radar technology that sends a low-powered microwave signal through the rubble, and looks for the very tiny reflections caused by the motions of the victims breathing and heartbeat. First responders can rapidly look at a series of buildings and determine if there are victims so that they can rescue them in time. There are, however, several shortcomings of FINDER, as: (a) microwaves may be harmful for struggling human bodies; (b) it may not provide consistently accurate results as it not fully automated and involves rescuers judgment in evaluating the reflections coming back from the human bodies; (c) wreckage may be made up of twisted and shattered materials causing the radar signals bounce back and making signals complex such that isolating the relatively weak signal of a heartbeat within the noisy signals becomes a difficult task; and (d) it may not sufficiently distinguish between the reflections from humans vs. animals. Though saving animals is also important, but saving human life is priority.
Other approaches have sought to utilize cellular (or “cell”) phone signals in order to locate people for various purposes. For example, the United States military employs a technology for cell phone locating called Stingray. Less expensive and lighter weight versions of the system have also been developed, such as one called the Wolfhound. Stingray or Wolfhound technologies typically are deployed through the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (“UAV”), whose use in modern times for various applications, including military, commercial, scientific, recreational, agricultural, and surveillance, is well established. UAVs are typically deployed along with a ground-based controller and a system of communications between the two as a part of an unmanned aircraft system (“UAS”). To attempt to locate persons through cell phone signals, a UAV may carry one, two, or three antenna systems similar to Stingray, or one of its less complex counterparts such as Wolfhound, and locate cell phones by multilateration. Alternatively, three UAVs, each equipped with one Wolfhound like device, can accomplish the same.
The Stingray system, however, is expensive and may not be accessible to first responders. Also, as both StingRay and Wolfhound may operate only when the cellular communication infrastructure (i.e. cell towers) is functional, a problem which exists is that if the cellular communication infrastructure in an area affected by a calamity is substantially or wholly inoperative, there is presently no locating system which can locate people by their cellular phones to in order to avoid the shortcomings of a system like FINDER. Thus, there remains a need for a system which can perform cell phone locating even when the cellular communication infrastructure is partially or wholly non-functional in the aftermath of a calamity.
Accordingly, what is needed is a system and method which employs a UAV to both deploy a radio access network in an affected area and detect and track individuals in the affected area using signals from cell phones in the affected area that are coming to the deployed radio access network. It would be additionally be desirable for such a system and method to aggregate information related to the detected cell phones in order to enable prioritization of rescue and related operations.
The Applicant's invention described herein provides for a system and method for finding out the victims' precise location, under the debris of wrecked infrastructures. The proposed approach employs an airborne eNodeB and smart antenna system which is hovering over the affected area. The airborne eNodeB and smart antenna system with the accompanying software resolves several issues the first responders face today in the rescue operation. More specifically, the system (a) pinpoints the victims' precise location to the first respondents as well as any robots that would assist in rescue operation (b) virtually classifies the disaster area into regions based on victims density, (c) provides the command center the real time data about the victims successfully rescued, and (d) provides a wireless communication means to the first respondents.
In this way, the system and method described herein is based on extracting and reusing the expedient information that smart antennas have about the number of cell phones, and their location, providing an approach that is much more efficient, accurate and safe for the struggling human bodies under the debris of collapsed buildings. As a result, many of the limitations imposed by prior art systems are removed.